Replying to
Dungeon Gals was a lot of fun. It's what it looks like on the tin; it's a light blend of puzzle platformer (how do I get over there), collectables (lots of money gems, and some big optional gems in each level), riddle solving (in a la mulana sense?), and combat (a few boss fights). I know a lot of folks might bounce off of any of these genres, so I think I'd say that all of these are light elements and could be done by somebody who is """not good""" at them without too much frustration. The star of the show here is all of the characters: not just the dungeon gal trio, but also all of the npcs as well.
If anything, the combat especially is especially light. The "hallway" enemies are mostly there just to give a little bit of texture to the levels, and the bosses are the only thing that present a challenge. I think if you were trying to play without getting hit, some of the bosses might actually be quite hard. What mitigates this is that you can literally order from the online bovinae bakery via a menu and full heal at any time for 200 money. By the end of the game, I had 14000 money on hand after spending at least 3000 on heals. So, the combat can just be easily brute forced. But I think this also makes the money aspect a little bit weak too. The end of the game does include some different ending sequences if you have enough money (which you don't know until literally the last moment of the game), and so up until then there's almost no point in collecting oodles of money other than it's just fun to platform around and collect stuff. I don't think this is really a combat game or a collectable game though and so I think it's fine that these systems are much more "loose" than they would be in other games that are focusing on those elements.
The level design and movement mechanics are really good. You have three characters: Wendy the satyress (she/her), Izzy the cow (she/her), and Rosa the moth (it/its). They each have different movement/attack mechanics (and arguably a second subtle way to use them that you get taught later), but there's also fun mechanics that they all interact differently. They all do different things in water (izzy sinks vs rosa hopping on the surface) or different things on bouncy mushrooms. The level design was such that I never felt very stuck; it was usually obvious when something was impossible or needed to be done by a different character, and the game did a good job of slowly introducing various platforming mechanics. It was fun without being frustratingly challenging.
The best part of the game is the characters. The dungeon gals all smooch when you switch between them. The writing is fun. There's a lot of npcs. There's a surprising amount of backstory reveal for each character, and a surprising amount of narrative going on in the dungeoneering that's happening. This is truly the heart of the game. And, I guess this goes without saying, but I should say it anyway, it's that I am personally delighted by just how explicitly gay and trans and poly and furry and etc etc etc this game is. There's discussions about hormones and surgeries and pronouns and relationships. Rosa's ex shows up. There's identity-related nail polish. There's pronouns in the credits. This would probably be too much for some folks, but it's very much a game for me, specifically. I love it.
